Meritage Homes Corp. paid $4 million for 4.89 acres at The Reserve at Stone Hall subdivision in Hermitage as part of its acquisition of locally based Phillips Builders, according to Davidson County property records.

Overall,Scottsdale, Ariz.-based Meritage will buy about 500 lots from E. Phillips Development LLC among assets and operations included in the deal. Other lots are at Tollgate Village and Bent Creek in Williamson County and also at Berry Hill and Indian Lake Village in Sumner County.

The purchases mark entry into Nashville of Meritage, the ninth-largest publicly traded homebuilder in the country based on closings last year.

Meritage joins D.R. Horton and Lennar Homes among new entrants to Nashville’s homebuilding market that have been snapping up home sites.

The company plans to operate under the Phillips Builders brand name here. Jason and Charlie Phillips will continue to lead the operations here.

You can add another big name to the list of major players who have been looking around Nashville to scoop up rental homes.

In the past year, corporate investors have spent more than $160 million to buy homes all over the region. The investors plan to buy the homes, rent them out and hold onto them for a longer term while the homes increase in value.

The practice has been especially prevalent in cities likes Atlanta, Las Vegas and other markets that were hit hard by the housing crisis.

San Francisco-based Landsmith LP, one of the largest of these investors, acknowledged the company has spent $11 million to purchase 118 homes in Nashville.

The company joins two other major players with investments in Nashville.

List prices in Nashville have risen modestly in the past year, despite a significant drop in the number of homes for sale, according to figures released by real estate blog site Movoto.

The average list price has risen by 7.5 percent in the past year, from $107 per square foot in June 2012 to $115 last month, Movoto said in its monthly “State of the Market” report. During the same time, the inventory of Middle Tennessee homes for sale has fallen by 24.7 percent.

Despite the price increase, Nashville remains a relative bargain. Among the 28 U.S. cities tracked by Movoto, list prices have risen an average of 15 percent, to $181 per square foot. Those cities’ combined for-sale inventory was 20.5 percent below the year-ago level.

Still, it was the second straight month that inventory levels have risen. If that trend continues, list prices could begin falling later this year, Movoto said.

Several Middle Tennessee real estate agents and teams were among the nation’s top producers last year, according to recently released rankings.

The rankings, compiled by Real Trends and The Wall Street Journal, are based on an annual survey of agents and national real estate brands with figures independently verified. It ranks the top 250 in each of four categories: Individual agent transaction sides, individual agent sales volume, agent team transaction sides and agent team sales volume.

Home prices are rising faster in major U.S. cities than in their suburbs, especially in neighborhoods that have larger gay and lesbian populations and are more racially diverse, according to a national listing service.

Asking prices, on a per-square-foot basis, for houses in urban neighborhoods have risen by 11.3 percent in the past year, Trulia says. In suburban neighborhoods, the price gain was 10.2 percent.

The company defined urban neighborhoods as those where most of the housing is in the form of apartments, attached townhomes or other multi-unit buildings, and suburban areas as those having mostly single-family detached houses.

Home prices have risen even faster, by 14.3 percent, in neighborhoods where no racial or ethnic group makes up a majority of the population, Trulia said.

Neighborhoods where gay male couples make up more than 1 percent of the population – or three times the national average of the average neighborhood, Trulia says – saw a year-over-year price gain of 13.8 percent. Prices increased by 16.5 percent in areas with a similar percentage of gay female couples.

Census figures were used to determine gay/lesbian and racially diverse neighborhoods.

Those figures are based on asking prices for non-foreclosure homes in the 100 largest U.S. metropolitan areas, including Nashville, that were listed on Trulia in May 2012 compared to those listed in May 2013.

“We are excited about bringing our Lennar (homes) to the Nashville market,” said Rob Hutton, Lennar’s central region president. “We have been evaluating the Nashville market for some time and believe this is a perfect time to enter this market.”

Lennar is among up to six major out-of-town homebuilders that have been scouting the Nashville area for potential home sites. Nearly three months ago, D.R. Horton bought 28 residential lots in Smyrna for about $1.4 million.

The companies’ interest in the Nashville area reflects a strong recovery in the area’s housing market, said Edsel Charles, chairman of MarketGraphics Research Group, a Nashville-based new home market research company.

“This is huge — they’re big time and they’re quality,” he said about Lennar coming to town. “They’re not just one of the biggest they’re one of the best.”

There are still fewer Middle Tennessee homes for sale than there were a year ago, but the inventory crunch is easing, a national real estate listing firm said.

The number of Nashville-area listings on Zillow earlier this month was down 16.4 percent from the same date last year, the company said. But that’s an improvement from January, when listings were off 21.2 percent from the prior year, it said.

The greatest inventory decline (21.3 percent) in June was among bottom-tier homes, which Zillow defines as those in the bottom third of home value.

According to the Greater Nashville Association of Realtors, inventory levels were 14.1 below the year-ago level in May (the latest month for which data is available) and off 13.8 percent in January.

Nationally, Zillow said its January listings were down 17.5 percent and June listings off 12.2 percent from year-ago levels.

“Inventory will likely remain below year-ago levels for a while yet, as builders ramp up capacity and sellers wait to squeeze every drop of equity from their home before listing – but a corner has been turned,” said Stan Humphries, the company’s chief economist.

As builders complete more homes and more sellers enter the market, the additional supply should lower annual growth in home prices from the current 5 percent pace to a more-sustainable 3 to 4 percent, he said.

Nashville’s skyrocketing rents led the nation last month, a national real estate firm says.

Rents here have risen by 15.5 percent in the past year, easily topping second-place Lakeland, Fla.’s 12.9 percent gain, Trulia reported in its latest monthly snapshot. The average rent increase among the nation’s 100 largest metro areas was 2.3 percent.

A recent Tennessean analysis of Census data found that more than half of Davidson County renters and a third of homeowners are ‘cost-burdened’ – meaning they spend more than the recommended maximum of 30 percent of their income on housing.

Some Tennessee homeowners soon will get more money than initially thought from the national foreclosure settlement.

In the coming weeks, about 18,000 Tennessee borrowers who were foreclosed upon will receive checks of about $1,480 each as compensation for lender abuses during the housing slump.

“Although we realize this does not make up for the stress and frustration many borrowers suffered, these payments will help compensate foreclosed borrowers for the mortgage servicing abuse that they likely endured,” Tennessee Attorney General Bob Cooper said in a statement.

Those abuses included ‘robo-signing’ of court affidavits, filing documents with false and erroneous information and other improper tactics in support of foreclosure actions.

The servicers –Ally Financial Inc. (formerly GMAC); Bank of America Corp.; Citigroup Inc.; J.P. Morgan Chase & Co.; and Wells Fargo & Co. – reached the $25 billion settlement with the federal government and 49 state attorneys general, including Cooper, last year. It applies to borrowers whom the five servicers foreclosed upon from Jan. 1, 2008 to Dec. 31, 2011.

The per-check amount is nearly double the $840 that officials initially projected homeowners would receive under the deal.

The higher payouts are the result of fewer people returning claim forms, said Matt Pulle, a Tennessee assistant attorney general who is coordinating the settlement in the state. Only 58 percent of the 31,000 eligible Tennessee borrowers who were sent forms actually returned them.

“We came across a lot of folks who just don’t open their mail,” he said. “Overall, though, we’re happy with the return rate, especially with it being higher than the national average.”

The national average was about 56 percent, Pulle said. In all, the settlement administrator will mail checks to 962,278 U.S. borrowers next week.

However, not all will get the full amount. Joint borrowers who have since divorced or separated and no longer live at the same address will receive split checks. Checks to those who do not have a valid Social Security number on file will be delayed until tax-related issues are addressed.

Those issues include an IRS determination on whether the check amounts will be considered taxable income, Pulle said.

Another 31,000 U.S. borrowers, including potentially several hundred in Tennessee, will be added to the settlement based on new information from Citi and JPMorgan Chase. Those borrowers will be notified and sent claim forms later this summer, Cooper’s office said.

Those payments are separate and in addition to those paid out under an agreement that 13 servicers, including four also participating in the foreclosure settlement, reached with federal financial regulators as part of an independent foreclosure review.

Individual payouts under that $3.6 billion agreement range from $300 to $125,000. More than 3.9 million checks totaling more $3.4 billion have been sent so far, the U.S. Comptroller of the Currency said last week.

More information on the foreclosure settlement is available here. Click here for details on the independent foreclosure review agreement.

About 22 percent of Nashville-area homeowners had negative equity on their home in the first quarter, according to a report by Zillow.

Nationally, the rate fell to 25.4 percent of all homeowners with a mortgage, according to the first quarter Zillow Negative Equity Report. However, another 18.2 percent of homeowners with mortgages, while not technically underwater, likely do not have enough equity to afford to move.

A homeowner technically reaches positive equity as soon as the market value of their home exceeds their outstanding loan balance. But listing a home for sale and buying a new one generally requires equity of 20 percent or more to comfortably meet related costs.

“Reaching positive equity, even barely, is an important milestone. But things like real estate agents’ fees and a down payment for the next home traditionally come out of the proceeds from the prior home’s sale. Without enough equity, these costs will instead have to come out of a homeowner’s pocket, leaving many still stuck,” said Zillow chief Economist Dr. Stan Humphries. “The only cure is patience, as rising home values continue to build equity to the point where more homeowners can realistically sell.”

For a look at Nashville area home equity levels by ZIP code, click here.